The Messenger
by Clementive
Summary: AU. The world was a blanket of snow and gore when they met under poisonous clouds. Later, whenever she crossed the enemy lines, she told herself war had turned them into beasts. Yet, it never completely excused the burden of her task: to carry nothing but death to the other side. ShikaIno


_**This is a bit different from what I usually write and that alone makes me very anxious about how this turned out. Angst is stretched on every word of this one shot; let this be a fair warning. ;) I hope, nonetheless, you will all like it! :) Enjoy!**_

_**Pairing: ShikaIno **_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.**_

-X-

**The Messenger  
_by Clementive_**

**Dedication: This is a request for Mila (K. Pereira) who writes the longest and most touching reviews I have ever received. Thank you, Mila, for giving me my first (and only!) review in Portuguese. I hope you'll like it! :) **

-X-

The world was a blanket of snow and despair that turned their face ashen when the new messenger arrived from the general quarters.

The first messenger didn't last one week, Captain Shikamaru Nara recalled when he set his eyes on her, innocent and petite contrasting comically with them who had been on the front for so long.

The bomb lifted him up the air, imprisoning him in its blast. Like a doll, it took him, only to savagely tore his body apart, his messages lost in the depth of his pockets. He never told them where and when the enemy's bombs would pour down on them. Too late. Some messengers were simply more useful than others.

Shikamaru had lost count of messengers after the second year, around the same time he lost track of time. The immediacy of death was all he knew, now. It hovered above their heads like a cloud of impending destroyed hearts and pulverized limbs. Yet, clouds were the only familiar sparks of humanity, he allowed himself to still carry.

He knew clouds of ashes and dust.

He knew how they grew, terrible and thick, on certain days.

But he had forgotten about the rest that crystallized his childhood in another place, in another time.

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other to warm himself up, he glanced over at her shapeless form and her unmistakable blond hair and dying blue eyes. Messengers always tended to be shaped in quivering ashes, he mused. They never minded the whistles of bullets, the droplets of blood and the masquerade. The masquerade that made them smile at the enemy only to betray them later without a moment of notice. Fire sculpted them depending on the side of the battlefield they were on.

That was why they never last long; if they could escape bombs and ammunition, they could never escape the ferocious grip of guilt on their guts.

"That's the new messenger?" Kiba Inuzuka spat on the ground, his pale lips barely covering his chattering teeth. "Jesus, she looks like a goddamn angel. She won't last a freaking week. There're more bombs and this what they are giving us? No offense, sir, but what was that old Morino thinking?"

"Troublesome," Shikamaru mumbled, his lips pinched on his cigarette as his stiffened fingers curling around it.

The light didn't catch and he ended up shoving his trembling hands in his coat, his eyes still drawn to her. Her innocence almost pulsed around her, a blanket of useless hope in this hardened world of ice. Her eyes were dead but her heart still pounded.

He almost envied her.

Messengers were called clairvoyants on good days and they died on bad days. Like the others, limbs and heads dislocated breathed in the clouds of poisonous gas.

Yes, he _almost _envied her because unlike her he knew from which side the blast would come.

It was all about the intelligence trapped in the messenger's carcass. It was all about the spying and hiding. And death, and more death. Cadavers poured down on them alongside bombs and sometimes it was hard to tell which was which with the scent of burning flesh trapped in their airways. When they fell, when silence crept back on the battlefield in ghostly red tendrils, either hurt just as much. Mercilessly, they crushed them. On those days, mist coughed up only remains at their feet and messengers were praised.

Because there could have been more. There could always be more.

But they kept raining down, bombs and blood meddled in a puddle at their feet.

It had been years; they had lost count. Few remembered the beginning of the war, the why's and how's that echoed only as patriotic shouts now. That alone kept them from hurling themselves in front of the bullets. That and messengers.

"10 cigarettes says she won't last a week," Shikamaru grumbled, his dark eyes still fixed on her hooded form cloaked in the enemy's uniform.

The sun set and her back was to them, stilled and her skin ice-blue, shimmering like diamonds in the rare sun rays. Kiba's laughter rose in torrent of spit and curses and he found himself still drawn to her shadow on the snow.

In a few hours, she would cross enemy lines for the first time.

In a few hours, she would carry nothing but death for the first time.

-X-

Two weeks later, the messenger sat across him in the hole they had dug in the frozen ground. Planes didn't bother them as much when they slept even if they woke up someday with frozen limbs and a thin layers of snow. The cold crept in every wrinkle of their skin, permanently carved in their shivers. At least, planes flew over them without awaking them up with pain and shouts.

"Oi, Captain! I think some of the men would like to you to be generous with that fire, sir," Kiba smirked kicking his padded legs to make more room for another soldier.

Reluctantly, Shikamaru crossed his legs under him, the flames at the centre of the hole licking only timidly his frozen feet. The fire crackled, spreading shadows across her golden locks and blue lips. The shadows shifted and his words came back to him.

It had been two weeks.

She ate slowly, her fork pushing her food aside and he could feel himself still uneasily. The air still pulsed around her, her movements harmonious, lingering, exploring. How could a dead woman look so alive? Shikamaru didn't know whether he should spit on the floor or reach for her and ask her how she did it. How could the souls she carried be so silent that she could eat in peace?

Couldn't she hear the shadows and the howls of souls crawling on the snow?

"Is there something wrong with my face, Captain?" She snapped, her eyes piercing through him, startling him.

The dead so rarely stared back.

"No." His voice fell scorched and faint between them in the echoes of the battlefield.

Death never took a break. It kept fussing around them, draining them. It waited, prowled, and they served that beast before serving their country.

"Well, sir, now you are making me very uncomfortable."

He shrugged still transfixed by the sharp angles of her face and her bright eyes that reflect his cold ones. Shikamaru ignored Kiba's raised eyebrow and the others' snickers.

Did she know she was Death's favourite beast, its minion, draped in beauty and innocence. Did she know the intelligence she carried back calibrated Shikamaru's strategies? Had she not realized yet that whenever she crossed the enemy lines, the ones she can't find anymore died because of her?

"Sir, could you please stop staring at me?"

Scowling, she pushed back pale strands of hair sticking to her neck. His dark glance lingered on her, cold and calculating as if she was one of those codes that allowed the enemy to communicate.

"Geez, not very talkative, aren't we, captain?" She shook her head and her hair spilled across her shoulders. "What's your name, sir?"

At first, he stiffened feeling the uneasiness of the soldiers around them. Then, Shikamaru slowly ran a hand through his hair, his smile timid, hollow. Her innocence burned him. He got up and the blood rushed to her cheeks, anger curving her lips over her white teeth.

"Don't hold on to names, troublesome woman," he heard himself say, cold, detached. He spoke above the turmoil of bombs and blood. "Or they will make you dig up the graves and those names, you'll mark them with your blood."

Lazily, he looked up at the red and orange streaks exploding on the sky's usual blue as he climbed out of the hole with his riffle. The mashed vegetables weighed on his guts, the sensation in his feet a mere tingling.

"I'm Ino, sir," he heard her call defiantly after him.

He kept walking.

He knew she wouldn't last long. Her innocence would protect her only for a month or so, because in war, all innocence was lost. Shikamaru knew that better than anyone and Ino already carried her own sentence.

Yet, he paused noting the distinct shape of a cloud that wouldn't fall on them in acid rains. He had forgotten about the breeze and harmless clouds. There used to be less snow and more living creatures hunting their preys in the woods.

He simply had to forget about them.

Tentatively, he tasted her name in the cold creeping breath of the night. He wished it didn't sound as hopeful.

-X-

A month later, her eyes bore through him. The enemy stood behind her, smirking at him. Shikamaru clung to her dying eyes. She held the souls she had taken in them. They paled, they gleamed as he raised his gun.

Ino faced him as if they were enemies, scowling, hissing. She already knew what she had to do.

She raised her own gun and the air stilled.

She could only see through a bluish pool of souls for all she touched and named turned to dust. Distractingly, Shikamaru wondered how he looked in the mist of her ghosts.

His finger curled around the trigger. He fired first.

-X-

Ino breathed hard, not glancing back at the smoking bodies behind her. They had laughed two hours ago. They had eaten fours hours ago. They were still alive seconds ago. She let her handgun fall at her feet. The snow engulfed it and she shivered from the coldness spreading in her veins, their smiles and names already forgotten.

Shikamaru approached her, his eyes searching the forest for any eyewitness that would endanger her. She leaped forward, her nails digging in arms. She shivered still and she pressed the barrel of his gun against her shoulder.

"I can't go back unscratched, sir," her tongue thickened in her mouth as she waited for his reaction. "They're not stupid! Hurry, there's a second platoon behind!"

He nodded slowly, taking in her frightened widened eyes. He wondered if she feared pain more than death, if this was why she still hoped. Her will didn't waver and he almost asked.

"Sir!"

"The name's Shikamaru."

Then, he shot her.

-X-

When Shikamaru saw Ino again, a month had hurried by unable to erase the memory of her lying in her own blood.

Abruptly, he shoved his trembling hands in his pockets and clenched his teeth. Flames danced on her purple but peaceful face across camp. Her heart still pounded and her eyes, when they found his, still gleamed with emptiness. She walked towards him the arm he shot strapped to her side and her smile illuminating her face.

There was still something powerful wrapped around her. He studied her as she approached, chasing across her features after what could make her so pure and yet, so dead.

"Hey," she breathed out, her breath condensing in the cold air. For the first time, she tested his name in a whisper.

"Hey," he leaned forward, ablaze in the heat of her presence. "You're alive, troublesome woman."

In a shift movement, he traced the curve of her jaw before taking his hand back at his side. Titling her head, Ino didn't flinch at his touch. She approached him, her fingers brushing his captain star over his heart. Something feral and intense lingered in her touch.

"My father survived four years as a messenger, so I won't die before at least five years, Shikamaru. Instead of worrying about my shoulder, you should worry about your strategies. I'm not risking my life crossing those lines so you can watch those stupid clouds of gas."

Hesitantly, his lips curved in a broken line as she flipped her hair awkwardly over her shoulder, gasping in pain.

She was still an anchor of hope even if a part of her lied dying next to her father. Even if a part of her still bathed in a pool of never-ending snow masking the putrefying smell of cadavers as she decoded her first messages of men about to die on her father's laps.

She died the moment she started living and that was her secret.

"You should stay the night. Troublesome bombs and opus tonight," he trusted his chin toward the boiling sky.

"How did you know?" She frowned, thinking of the messages she had just given to the general.

"The clouds," he breathed out, turning his hard stare towards her. "It's always about the troublesome clouds." his stare softened as she looked up, her hand hesitant over his.

"How do you do it?" Ino whispered, her fingers stopping over his dry-bloodied knuckles.

"Do what?"

They laced fingers, the world dozing off under a blanket of lingering frosty snow and hard mud. They barely breathed in, testing one another's limits. It had become more than first names and dead eyes on an angelic face.

"Look up at the sky when people are dying on the ground."

"I have forgotten they are people."

Shikamaru let go of her hand, abruptly turning away. A part of him stirred drowsily inside him the moment he form those words. Acid churned and disgust burned his throat. He couldn't wait for her own reaction of disgust. Her laboured breath still pounded in his head as he walked away without a second glance. He knew she would still burn for others, pure, untouched as she was.

When the darkness finally engulfed him in the tempo of the few remaining wolves, he stared down at his hands, shadows of crust of blood still harassing him.

He envied her because her hands if not her consciousness were clean. They didn't pull triggers, didn't beat anyone to the ground. They never killed directly, nor were they coaxed in memories of spit, blood and vomit that crushed beating chest.

"War has turned us into beasts," Ino later whispered in his ear, when she slipped between his arms.

Still, Shikamaru didn't allow himself to run his hands on her that night. He pinned hers down, when they tried to stop over the curve of his muscles. They shared one breath, still whispering one another's name as if they were invoking ghosts.

They were beast. They were ghosts. They were soldiers and tomorrow could be their last day.

-X-

Shikamaru never knew why she chose him if she ever did make a choice about him. He was afraid to ask and watched her vibrate only to explode in sparks of a drunken feverish dream. Every night when Ino stepped out of her uniform, she slipped between his arms and he grew even more afraid he would wake up to an empty gaping wound in his chest.

She sought the humanity in him, at every kiss they shared. His first touches were always meant to stop her but he always lost himself on the heat of her skin, and then inside of her.

"How do you do it?" he whispered once against her naked chest.

"Do what?"

"Pretend I'm not a killer and you're not a double-agent."

"We may be beasts, Shika, but I haven't forgotten about humans. Humans had always had the bad habit of dying," she yawned, running her fingers in his spiky hair. "This isn't new. War simply hurries things up."

"It's not that simple."

"It's always that simple, Shika. Just look at your clouds."

-X-

"Do they ever wonder where you are?" His hands brushed her scarred shoulder, as his lips espoused the curve of her jaw.

"No, when I go back I know they'll be dead. Their names are always on the list, Shika."

His hand stopped and Shikamaru looked up at her empty eyes, her emotionless face. Ino often shuddered from the cold pulsing inside her, just like he did.

They both felt it under their fingers, on what were good days.

-X-

They met under dry twisted branches two days after after the last shrilling bomb and the first green sprout timidly dangled in the harsh wind. Her blond hair whipped her cheeks and face.

Hungrily, Shikamaru caught the same amount of vibrating candour trapped in the enemy's uniform. Ino believed in a war that wouldn't last more than five years, in surviving it despite crossing the enemy's fire. She didn't mind being caught between two fronts, carrying intelligence that should entrap her in hell.

Without a word, she handed him thick layers of codes neatly traced.

"What do the clouds tell you today, Captain?"

"Warm weather, finally."

Her smile didn't reach her eyes, but she pressed her palm against his heart and it was as if it did. In another place, in another time, he knew it did. She shone in the cascade of sun rays that accounted for the mud clinging at their ankles. The world panted and the wind blew harder against them.

She was always the one to reach for his hands but that morning, he did.

"You already know about the armistice," her lips formed a pout but he already traced them with his thumb.

"The clouds told me," he whispered against her neck, listening to the raising laughter in her throat. "Don't go back there, Ino."

"If they ask me to, I will have to, Shikamaru. There's nothing your clouds can do about that."

He groaned, bitting her neck above her collarbone. Her hair spilled on the ground where he pushed her. The clouds crept in front of the sun and they gulped the air they have learned to share even when it stank of death.

"There's nothing you can do about that," she muttered pushing him slightly away so their eyes could meet.

A month ago, he would have pulled away as if stung. There was something utterly frustrating about feeling his heart hammer in his chest and the grip her presence seemed to have over it. At any moment, she could die and pull every viscera out of him. There was something utterly frustrating about acting like a human when bred as a beast under a blanket of war.

"I know, but it can't stop me from saying it."

If hope was anything, it was the clouds pushed by the breeze. They passed on bad days and lingered on good days. He told her as much, once.

"I hope..." She let her words revel in the rising sun, her fingers caressing his bristly jaw.

Her normally empty glance filled with answers and words that were thin and fragile like what they shared, naked, panting and quivering.

They kissed as if they had never acted like beasts.

They kissed again as if there was hope and the world spun around them, finally stripping from its blanket of gore and winter.

"I hope this is the end."

-X-

_**Well, this was a fun ride between hope and war.. ^_^ Please, let me know what you thought :)(So anxious, I swear I could burst). **_


End file.
